Movie review: Butler is a man on the run in ‘Angel Has Fallen’

Dana Barbuto More Content Now

Thursday

Aug 22, 2019 at 3:00 AM

After vanquishing terrorists from North Korea and the Middle East, Gerard Butler’s secret service agent extraordinaire Mike Banning returns for more mayhem in “Angel Has Fallen.” This time, he’s accused of plotting to kill the president and spends two bombastic hours trying to clear his name.

Director Ric Roman Waugh (“Shot Caller”), working from a script he co-wrote with Robert Mark Kamen (“Taken”) and Matt Cook (“Patriots Day”), assaults the senses with a circus of mindless violence, wreckage and (obvious) deception. It’s intermittently fun, exactly what you’d expect from a late-summer actioner; and you don’t need to have seen the first two movies to follow along.

Banning, code name “Angel,” is as righteous as ever and due a promotion that will allow him more family time with his wife (Piper Perabo, nothing to do) and baby daughter. He’s also secretly popping pain pills, suffering migraines and insomnia. His doctor calls him a “disaster waiting to happen,” a prescient observation in more ways than one.

While on a “relaxing” fishing trip at a secluded lake, a “secret” (well, it’s pretty obvious from the get-go) organization targeting President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) obliterates a couple dozen secret service officers in a coordinated drone attack. Banning, injured in the plot, wakes up hand-cuffed to his hospital bed, accused of all-sorts of high-crimes and misdemeanors, not the least of it is colluding with the Russians. How timely!

Logically (I’m being facetious), Banning takes it on the run, “Fugitive” style, to uncover the truth and save the country and his family from imminent danger. What? No time to forge Middle East peace?

Anyhoo, if you’ve seen the other “Has Fallen” entries (or any action movie), you can predict the outcome. There is no impossible situation Banning can’t escape, and thus no tension in a story that is supposed to be high-stakes. The climatic gun battle - in a glass office building - will make you feel like you’re a shooter in the popular video game “Fortnite.” It’s a dizzying, testosterone-fueled rush, but good luck trying to figure out who’s shooting whom.

“Angel Has Fallen” does banish a secret weapon in Nick Nolte, playing an off-the-grid Vietnam vet - and Banning’s estranged father. Of course, he does!

Not only does Pops lend his son a huge assist, but he also saves the movie from collapsing under its overwrought weight. With his overgrown white beard and wild hair, Nolte brings a gruff, paranoid kookiness (think of any of his mug shots) to a story speaking volumes on today’s divisive political climate. He gives the script heart and half a brain. The other supporting characters are one-dimensional: Jada Pinkett-Smith blandly plays the FBI investigator building the case against Banning; Danny Huston is a scenery (and cigar) chewing military contractor strapped for cash; Freeman, the only other character back from the previous films, spends much of the movie in a coma. How lucky for him!

And when he awakes, the Prez can be counted upon to spout soothing platitudes such as: “it is moments of struggle that define us.” Tim Blake Nelson plays the trigger-happy Veep bent on making “America strong again.” That’s enough to make the angels weep.

Dana Barbuto may be reached at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.